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Blog Swap Tour – William Thatch

So we’ve reached the final instalment of the Blog Swap Tour. No, please don’t cry. Here, have a tissue to wipe those tears away. They say ‘save the best until last.’ In today’s guest author, we definitely have one of the best. William Thatch’s story The Highway features alongside my own story, Get Your Kicks on Route 66 in Scout Media’s short story anthology, A Journey of Words. The book is available through Scout Media’s website, through Amazon and other good book retailers. Don’t forget to leave a review once you’ve read the book. Enjoy and thanks for reading!Author Name: William Thatch

Title of your AJOW story: The Highway

Post a brief synopsis of your AJOW story:

An abused dog gets free from her owner and goes on an adventure to see and smell things she hasn’t seen and smelled before.

What inspired you to write this story?

A couple of things. First and foremost would be my own dogs. They’re full of personality, and the family often does voices for them for our own amusement which has led to a unique vocabulary for the dogs. For example, in the story the dog refers to cars as “Big Metal Beasts” and doesn’t understand that it isn’t an animal, similar to to the voices / characters that our dogs have grown to be. Secondly, a character in the story called ‘The Good Man’ is the protagonist of a novel I’m working on titled The Wayward Son. The novel begins with his having walked from Las Vegas, Nevada to Riverton, Wyoming. I’d been daydreaming about what all happened on his way there, but didn’t feel there was a story from his perspective about the walk. But, there was plenty of story in the dog going for a walk and happening to meet him.

How long have you been writing?

Twenty-two years, give or take. I wrote my first story when I was five or six.

What genre do you usually write in and why?

Science fiction. Everything I’m writing is set in the same world somehow. Sometimes the science fiction would be obvious, like characters having some sort of supernatural powers. Other times it’s background details, like more advanced robotics than what we have, but it isn’t the focus of the story. I usually pair the sci-fi with something else, like noir or westerns.

What else are you working on writing at the moment?

As mentioned above I’m working on the Wayward Son, a novel about a man whose life has fallen to pieces and is returning to his childhood home to put it all back together. I have the first draft of a short story written for Scout Media’s next anthology (A Haunting of Words), titled Hollywoodland, Baby. I’m also in the process of preparing two television pitches—the Extinction Event and the Caper Chronicles. The Extinction Event has also been written as a series of short stories, but how and when that would be released is a unknown.

What advice do you have to give to new writers?

Write. You’ll suck at first, but we all did. It takes time to learn how to do this properly. Just write, make mistakes, and learn from them. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll spot when you did something wrong and figure out how to not make that mistake the next time.